Foo Fighters

CHAPTER ONE
Washington, DC - January 12, 1945
Donovan needed time to think.
He twirled his padded chair ninety degrees into the sunshine streaming through the open vertical window blinds. A car horn honked down at street level. Today's first-thing-in-the-morning phone call from the White House hadn't surprised him. Orders were orders. Besides, every boss had a boss too. Such was politics in the nation's capital.
OSS Director Bill Donovan had been witness to four years of drastic changes in his business, in this the sixth year of war. The intelligence agency had evolved from its first rather silly label of Coordinator of Information by a 1941 presidential order, to the present day OSS - Office of Strategic Services - a year later. With only ninety-two people to kick-start it in 1942, the OSS now deployed 16,000 members world-wide, many of those engaged in clandestine operations behind enemy lines. All this out of Donovan's headquarters here at 2430 E Street in the nation's capital, where his door was said to be always open to anyone.
Donovan had tolerated the earlier mass of confusion in setting the secret force up.
The recruiting.
The hiring.
The colorful figures. Actors. Poets. Lawyers. Bankers. Filmmakers.
In time came the stress. The countless hours in the office after midnight. He had also put up with the jokes on what the OSS stood for. Oh, so sweet. Oh, so social. Oh, so stupid. They were often accused of fighting a plush war. But only the jealous said such things, and in whispers.
Major-General William "Wild Bill" Donovan was a vigorous sixty-one years young. Most men would consider retirement at his tender age, after such a flamboyant career as Wall Street lawyer, decorated World War I battlefield hero, Republican nominee for New York Governor, and OSS Director. But this modern knight of the twentieth century had no intention to retire from public service. He still had a mission to fulfill, and that was to see the end of the war, the war that saw the OSS conduct subversion, propaganda, and extensive military operations to confuse America's enemies. This was the war that made Donovan the man of the hour in Washington, the nation's number one information gatherer. In Washington, hordes were talking about Bill Donovan and his activities. The organization that he had pieced together from nothing in 1941 was now more powerful and more influential than the FBI. And certain people cringed at that, namely FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Financed by secret funds at his disposal, with minimal security and little red tape to bother with, the OSS was a law unto itself, the way Donovan and President Roosevelt preferred it. The less the public knew, the better.
The President. Bless him.
Now there was a sad case, Donovan thought painfully.
Donovan chuckled, his memory selecting one particular White House visit in 1943, when he had pulled a fast one on his vigilant commander-in-chief. The general, by then a common visitor to the mansion on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, had approached the Oval Office carrying a sandbag and a concealed weapon, a new, noiseless, flashless .22-caliber pistol. Roosevelt, dictating a letter to his secretary, waved for Donovan to enter the room. While Roosevelt and the woman were preoccupied, Donovan set the sandbag on the floor, then quickly fired an entire clip of bullets into it. Neither Roosevelt nor his secretary so much as flinched. When the secretary left the room, Donovan wrapped the hot barrel with a handkerchief and presented the silent killer gun to the startled president, who hadn't heard a thing.
"Wild Bill," the president had roared after the incident, "you're the only black Republican I'll ever allow in my office with a weapon like this. Give my regards to the manufacturer."
Donovan did just that. He also placed an order for several of the guns for his OSS people.
Those were the last of the fun-loving days at the White House.